


give me something to believe in

by doubtthestars



Category: Football RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Comfort, Gen, New Beginnings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-14
Updated: 2017-10-14
Packaged: 2019-01-17 03:56:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12356934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doubtthestars/pseuds/doubtthestars
Summary: Woj had been told all of his life that goalkeepers were special.  Meeting Gigi, it finally stuck.Magic AU





	give me something to believe in

**Author's Note:**

  * For [louis_quatorze](https://archiveofourown.org/users/louis_quatorze/gifts).



> I do apologize for this disaster of a fic. I lost control of my muse once I settled on this idea. Thanks to the mods for making this possible!
> 
> [ some woj inspiration](http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=1088)

Wojciech bounces on his feet a couple of times before edging a toe onto the field where the rest of the team were training. He had been there before of course, but it was different now. The contract had settled along his shoulders and arms as if weighing the potential of his shot-stopping ability. The Italian league had a lot of old magic anchoring it and it affected the players in strange ways. Rumor has it, Totti was gifted with some sort of 360 vision, like an owl. 

He took in a deep, solid breath of air in. 

It wasn’t like he expected to fit in perfectly just yet. Gigi was still acting captain and senior goalkeeper. The magic of La Vecchia Signora wouldn’t accept him as an anchor until Buffon really retired. 

-

January was always the worst. He always managed to get a cold or the roof sprung a leak or any amount of small and irritating things that went wrong in the winter season. This year felt worse on the scale of bad luck to fuck ups. Woj would think he’s cursed but the magicians on staff had already tested him and all his belongings that might’ve been tampered with. It was all him and his luck.

The game against Southampton felt like it was dragging on, a thick sludge on everyone playing making them slow and less in tune with each other. Wojciech isn’t paying attention to anything in particular besides that itchy, wrong sensation of something being off balance. Magic wasn’t supposed to interfere with matches. No one on their own could generate much of anything. They didn’t have any high level casters on Arsenal. In fact, Woj was probably one of the highest on the scale just by virtue of his affinity, but his gloves took care of that in case he managed to lose his temper or mismanage the spark.

He let in a goal, head still trying to puzzle out what was unsettling him until they got back into the dressing room at half time. He sat down as usual, waiting, listening to the coaches and disappointed teammates. Catching sight of the clock, Woj followed the second hand for a few moments.

He blinked, tuning out the voices and the normal chaos of the room. His self-awareness kicked in, the magic he had hummed a discordant tune, like he was hitting the wrong key in a measure every time he tried to play the song. Wojciech blinked again. The clock face, bright white, was something, something important. 

His heartbeat was steady. It was remarkably steady for the anger and guilt swimming in his gut. It always had been since--his concentration snapped, all the noise came rushing back as Per got up next to him with a friendly hand on his shoulder.

“It will be alright,” he reassured him. Wojciech managed a tense smile, jumping in place to get the blood flowing again. 

After the game ended, it was quiet. So quiet, he could hear the faint ticking of the clock. He ripped off his gloves. There was a faint pop in his ears, something cracked in chest before he realized with a burst of adrenaline that he needed to get in the showers. 

The sparks at his fingertips hissed into steam when he got to the water. He felt dizzy and wrung out. Having to fall back on one of the safety protocols he hadn’t used since he got over puberty felt like a damning sentence more than whatever vitriol the media would spit out over the losing scoreline from today. 

Arsenal herself was rejecting him. His magic was destabilizing, fraying away from the connection to the team’s wellspring. His hands started to shake as the realization set in.

“Oh god, oh god.” Panic squeezed his throat in a noose. The club couldn’t go on with a slipping anchor. It would choose another goalkeeper in time and Woj would just be left with the smell of old books rotting in the back of his throat. 

That was when Rosicky found him. 

-

For a team to work properly, the newest player had to meet all the integrated members. A handshake can usually give enough of an impression to know whether someone is a good fit, but the more people working together, the more complicated it got. 

Jack had always given him a sense of brute force, a bat hitting the floor, a smack to the back of the head. They rarely cast anything serious together between them. Though, one time Jack swore he had made Woj’s ears bigger. In Arsenal, he became part of a unit that lent speed and swiftness to the metronome of the ball hitting their feet. They never managed to rebuild the grand clockwork that had been the Arsenal of old’s magical signature but there were still echoes of it in particularly good plays.

Robert had a very tactile signature, like a lot of their Poland teammates. Woj had never asked him what he felt he brought to the national team as their goalkeeper. He didn’t want to know if Robert would give an honest answer or not. 

Ruga should be off-putting. The handshake is quick and Daniele doesn’t meet his eyes for the seconds it lasts. Wojciech smiles anyway. There was nothing wrong with the sturdiness of concrete, but he could see how it would be tricky on other teams, in other instances to be attached to such a man. That was the tricky part with defensive lines and strike partners, there had to be a good mesh and balance to their combinations. 

Wojciech was a wildfire. He was certain Ruga could contain his more spontaneous impulses if needed. 

-

“Everyone has a little bit of magic, Wojtek. If you work with someone else, you make bigger magic. Some gifts are stronger, but one person can never defeat two or three people working together.” It was old hat. Many a lecture had started with those exact words. He looked down at his shoes, brooding anger kept in check by counting the white specks on his black laces. 

“Football is always working as a team” His father pauses and snaps a finger. Wojciech bites the inside of his lips, picking his head up. “and the team can have as many defenders and midfielders and forwards as they like, but there is only one goalkeeper, Wojtek. Why?” 

He rolls his eyes, “Because the goalkeeper is the one constantly in contact with the club’s magic.” Wojciech had heard that enough times to get a big head about his position and subsequently get his bubble burst when it wasn’t as easy as advertised. He was good, but he wasn’t one with the Force especially with Legia waiting for the next Szczesny to be their new star. 

“They make a pair, Wojciech, and that feeds the rest of the team. A good goalkeeper will bring you victory, but a great one will make a team legendary.” 

Wojciech thinks about Jens Lehmann and Arsenal’s invincible season a couple of years back. 

“When you were still in your mother’s belly, you turned her eyes into a lizard’s for a week. I knew then you would be strong, so you must show how strong you are over the fire you have at your hands.” The disappointment sets in at his disapproval.

Wojciech hunches. He had personally always changed the words to suit him better: born strong but unlucky. It was barely a party trick, making fire dance at the tip of his fingers, but it was imprinted deep into his magic. His childhood friends would laugh and tease, where the smell of smoke was, soon enough there would be fire. 

Control went against the grain for Wojciech.

-

There was a shortcut to strengthening a bond. It wasn’t recommended for long-term set ups like a sports team or astronauts, because more often than not it was unpredictable and wasn’t sustainable. Sex was somewhat of a last resort for Woj anyway. It could get hairy with his affinity without involving somebody being naked. Not that he didn’t enjoy shamelessly flirting or the act itself, but the warnings had stuck around in his brain that he had to be cautious. 

Besides, footballers made the worst boyfriends. 

Gianluigi Buffon, to his mage senses, felt like the calm before the storm, and strangely enough, the closed hold of the waltz, moments before the turns began. He couldn’t hear the music just yet but he knew the steps well enough to be guided. 

Buffon laughed like he savored the joy it brought him when Woj had shaken his hand. 

“Fulmini,” he exclaimed before realizing that wasn’t in any of the Italian vocabulary Woj had picked up or nothing he could remember outright and turning to prod Filippi into a translation after a few seconds of conversation and some slight confusion. 

“Lightning, your magic is like lightning.” He provides with a heavy accent. Wojciech would ask him to give back the same courtesy but felt like it was take too much time to get the description across. He thanked both of them, atrociously no doubt, his tongue still familiarizing itself with a third language. At least with English, he had been young. Now, he was just older and more stupid with his lessons.

He would still spend time with a dictionary, carefully trying to piece together the sentences to return the favor at some point.

-

Meditation was an important part of a goalkeeper’s routine. It made you more in tune with the ambient magic of the stadium and the magical signature that started to form between everyone. Truth be told, he never liked it. He wasn’t one of the highest level casters anymore but Woj had always had a unique talent for catching a drop of magic before it merged with the sea. It made sensing the codified whole overwhelming for him. As a goalkeeper, his management of the team’s magic was a bit like troubleshooting rather than a handyman that knew a little bit of everything. At Roma, they had tried working with him to find a way to ease the transition after so long with Arsenal. It had taken him months to get used to a different set of demands. And the club's magic had never quite worked as well for him as he kept that stubborn hope of getting back to Arsenal alive in his heart. This time it had to be different. He had made up his mind on the subject.

Juventus as a club felt like a giant and he was trying to climb the beanstalk into the kingdom in the clouds. There was no telling how she would take him being between the posts instead of Gigi. 

It made him nervous. His problems had never come around at establishing a connection. No one else seemed worried so he tried not to let it bother him or at least not show it outwardly. Pinsoglio assured him it had taken a while for him to feel the club's magic. _She is willful._ Carlo had pondered the adjective before shrugging. Gigi had taken another approach entirely when he heard of his dilemma. 

"You see Paulo," He pointed him out like Woj had somehow been under a rock the entire time he had been in Italy. The striker was bouncing a ball around, keeping it in the air without much effort. "Look closer," Gigi murmured, the hand on his shoulder moving just so, thumb brushing the skin above his collar. Woj felt the force of their magic connect like static electricity. His eyes caught a flash or a shimmer around Dybala. It felt like time had slowed down to the thwack of the ball connecting with Paulo's knee. 

"Wha-?" His head felt woozy when Gigi released him. He didn't normally have the sight ability to catch magic auras like that. Maybe it was Gigi's gift or maybe he had borrowed it from the team. 

"She favors him. I've never seen anyone take to the club magic so quickly. He says the Italian spirits aren't so hard to get to know, that it always happens that way, without any effort. I did think it might've been his gift, but," he trails off, still looking at Paulo. Wojciech frowned--well, he wasn't as lucky as Dybala he knew that much--was he supposed to shadow the kid until he had a breakthrough? 

Gigi turned to give him his full attention, whatever else he had been searching for no longer important. 

"Now you know, you learn how to sense the magic with the others, you can sense her with you when the time comes." Woj blinks in surprise, his mouth slightly open. It was a good idea in theory, though he didn't think he could last very long with augmented sight so he'd have to find a way to use his already tuned senses, but it was a clever idea and somewhere to start. With Gigi helping him, he'd be only a step removed from the source. 

"Yes, that could work." He nods, optimism lodging itself in his throat. 

"Good, I'll talk to Filippi. We can do that instead of the extra meditation." Gigi laughed, and Woj almost thought the breeze had laughed with him. He caught Paulo coming up to them out of the corner of his eye. The green bib really stood out against the white of the training kits. 

He looked up to no good with a smile that only made Woj feel older than he actually was, or maybe just keenly aware of the years between them. There was mischief in his eyes, but Wojciech had practically invented the word in his academy days. He knew how much you could get away with, if you were wily enough. Paulo seemed wily enough in his books. 

"Talking about me?" He raises his eyebrows. Gigi gave nothing away but exasperated fondness so Wojciech followed his lead with his best attempt at a poker face. 

"What makes you think that?" Gigi asked. 

"You were staring." His grin, if possible, got wider. His eyes landed on Woj, leering slightly. He changed nothing about his stance, not giving him an inch but still prepared for some sly comment. He didn't think Gigi would need to intervene for this sort of team-building. 

"You're always taller than I expect." Woj barely restrains himself from laughing, but he does straighten up, trying to loom over Paulo with his considerable height. 

"So you think about me a lot?" It was too easy of a shot to not turn the tables on him. Paulo cocked his head as Gigi chuckled. It felt like he had passed some sort of test as Paulo's demeanor changed into something less goading and something more natural. His smile was still prominent on his face. Wojciech wondered if there was more to Paulo's secret gift than doting team spirits. 

"Of course. How else will I know how to get a goal past you in training?" He tapped Woj's cheek twice with his the pads of his fingers. He got the distinct feel of bird feathers and a patch of warm sun, even as he knew it was just cool enough to be comfortable outside and the clouds were threatening rain for later. 

"I feel like practicing freekicks." He declares as a challenge. Woj shakes off the brief spark of magic, wondering what Paulo had thought of his signature. "Coming?" He's already sprinting away to get some distance between them. Wojciech looks to Gigi, who only encourages him to take his place to fend off Paulo's kicks. Soon enough, some of the others joined as well, to watch and yell out suggestions. 

It felt like a new beginning. 

\- 

Nine-Nine. 

Nine was a multiple of three. Nine was the end of a cycle, a transformation, or at least that’s what Marina had told him when she had been on a numerology kick. Nine and nine was eighteen and he wasn’t eighteen anymore. He wouldn’t see a sea of red or the Emirates. Allegri had called for rotation, had shook him by the shoulders in encouragement and left Wojciech with the urge to go running or sneak a smoke in. Even if that wasn't the person he wanted to be anymore.

Ruga is with him in the lineup, which he suspects will be a norm for them as they worked well together. 

In the dressing room, he takes his time, adjusting himself to the expectations and nerves. 

Trust isn't something easily given and on teams like this, Wojciech knew the process was doubly hard. Being tagged as the successor, the second act to the greatest goalkeeper of the age was monumental. It would either put enough pressure on him to grow into the goalkeeper he'd always thought himself as or cast him out of greatness to claw his way back up again. Juventus had him in her hands either way. 

That is when he feels the slightest of warmth, traveling up and up through him to reach the top of his head. It felt like a benediction. Gigi catches his eye and he's certain he hadn't imagined it. He winked. Magic was present as Matuidi and Medhi joked around with Pjanic watching covertly. Magic was with Sturaro, Daniele and the rest milling around before the game started. Allegri clapped his hands together to get the attention of the team to say a few words and remind Stefan to keep an eye out on his side. 

They bring in their hands as a team. Gigi's steadying presence next to him. 

His hand lands towards the top of the pile and the club magic sings a birdsong with thunder.


End file.
